I'm thinking of getting Kody a flu shot but would love some feedback on this. Has anyone had this for their pups? Any problems I should be aware of? The SF Bay Area has been struck with dog (and people) flu really badly and many dogs have lost their lives. I've even stopped Kody from daycare as I don't want to take a chance with his health.

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Rosa

Proud Mom to Eli and Kodiakand never to be forgotten, Shiloh and ShoshiEvery dog deserves to have a human that thinks its the greatest dog that ever lived!

Yeah, I'm thinking she might be able to chime in here. So far it looks like something I want to do. The last thing I want to do with my young boy is to isolate him and stop his exposure training but can't say I feel comfortable taking him far from home right now. I also worry that we could bring something back to Eli.

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Rosa

Proud Mom to Eli and Kodiakand never to be forgotten, Shiloh and ShoshiEvery dog deserves to have a human that thinks its the greatest dog that ever lived!

I'm not a vax fan in general, I don't get the people flu vax, so I'm not the most helpful here.

I do know it's only meantfor dogs in high dog areas, generally kenneled or sheltered. The daycare I take jazz too is monitoring the situation and they thus far are not requiring it. Luckily they accept jazz's vaccine waivers, though she did have one vax in the shelter as a pup.

She also came to me with severe IBD as a pup, no telling what contributed to that.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to call the Vet and make an appointment. I'd like Kody to be able to still go to daycare but I'm not willing to take him there unless he's vaccinated. A friend of Nancy's lost her 8 month old lab puppy to this flu so its some scary stuff. I just don't want to take any chances with my baby.

I understand they can still get the flu but just like with people once they are vaccinated its not suppose to be so bad if they do get it.

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Rosa

Proud Mom to Eli and Kodiakand never to be forgotten, Shiloh and ShoshiEvery dog deserves to have a human that thinks its the greatest dog that ever lived!

They are starting to require the flu vax at daycare right now, so I'll be trying to get jazz exempted. I do have a letter from her internal medicine vet.

I did some research and I don't think they have done full duration of immunity studies on it, but it appears that duration is not long-lived. They accepted her waiver for bordatella, so hopefully they will also accept it for the flu vax. I completely understand why a very busy daycare center would want to do everything it can to protect itself. I did find an article by jean dodds that addressed my concerns about the flu vax not being modified for current strains, so I would predict, over time, as more dogs use the vaccine, the less effective it will be as the strain(s) mutate, if they don't modify what's in it.

Now I need to figure out if that vaccine produces viral shedding that will pose a risk to her if she is around every dog who is shedding the vaccine over the next month or so because they have been recently vaccinated. She is vit D deficient, so I'll be sure to keep that up, since it sure helped me when I had the flu. (edit: it appears that these are killed vaccines, so should not expect shedding, which is a good.)

From what I can tell the Nobivac canine flu bivalent contains chemically inactivated viruses and it should not produce an infection in vaccinated dogs-so no shedding risk. Then again, what I read about online may not be the vaccine that is currently used. It's weird because a live attenuated flu virus is a much better vaccine.